Ethical Social Issues Research Articles

Application of self-supervised learning in natural language processing

Self-supervised learning uses the label-free data learning model and has a significant impact on the NLP task. It reduces data annotation costs and improves performance. The main applications include pre-training models such as BERT and GPT, contrast learning, and pseudo-supervised and semi-supervised methods. It has been successfully applied in text classification, emotion analysis and other fields. Future research directions include mixed unsupervised learning, cross-modal learning and improving interpretability of models while focusing on ethical social issues.

Informant report of practical judgment ability in a clinical sample of older adults with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia

ABSTRACT Despite the importance of capturing problems with judgment and decision-making during neuropsychological evaluations of older adults, there are a limited number of validated measures and no informant rating scales. We developed an informant measure that captures compromised judgment related to safety, medical, financial, and social-ethical issues After item refinement and piloting in a memory disorders clinic, we utilized the Test of Practical Judgment-Informant (TOP-J-Informant) at two clinics in the Midwestern U.S., including 189 patient/informant dyads (mean age = 79.0, median years of education = 13, % female = 67.7) with various preclinical and clinical dementia conditions. We found psychometric support, including evidence for convergent, divergent, and criterion-related validity, and internal consistency. Importantly, we were able to discriminate between diagnostic groups in the expected direction. The TOP-J-Informant is brief (<5 minutes), easy to administer, and can reveal areas of concern related to poor judgment when administered in the context of a neuropsychological evaluation or clinic visit.

Concepts and controversies of malingering: A re-look.

Since time immemorial, humans have tried to feign physical and mental illnesses for various reasons. This led to the development of the concept of illness deception or malingering when one tries to assume a sick role and feigns signs and symptoms to gain external incentives. The conceptual framework of malingering has undergone several changes and there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that malingering exists. However, the diagnosis of malingering has not yet been established in the mainstream psychiatric nosological systems and still it is present in the appendices as an additional area requiring attention. This is due to the poor construct validity of the diagnosis, problems in defining malingering, problems in assessment by psychological tests and clinical assessment methodology, no well-established guidelines to detect malingering and issues related to labelling/reporting malingering. Because of several controversies in multiple domains of assessment and ethical-social issues, malingering as a distinct entity is grossly neglected. In the upcoming arena of law suits and consumer benefits suits, it is extremely important to have a better understanding of the conceptual issues related to malingering and the controversies related to it. In this review, a brief overview of evolution of concepts and controversies related to malingering is described.

Ethics from Pulpits of the Church of Norway: A Self-Report Survey of Social-Ethical Issues

Abstract To what extent do Norwegian ministers deal with social-ethical issues in their sermons? While we examine the frequency of such topics in this article, we primarily explore the potential determinants of their priorities in discussing these issues: their individual backgrounds, their ethical and political orientations, the local parish characteristics and the ministers’ sources of inspiration in preparing sermons. The results shows that different ethical orientations appear to be largely unrelated to the frequency of addressing social-ethical issues. Experiences in nature are the most important source of inspiration. The school at which the minister was trained has a significant impact on frequency, while political orientation has a very weak influence. Different parish characteristics—affluence and level of social challenges—and the age and marital status of the clergy do have an impact on which issues are given priority. The minister’s gender and geographical location both have no effect.

The Ethics of Branding in the Age of Ubiquitous Media: Insights from Catholic Social Teaching

Branding has long been seen as an effective means of marketing products. The use of brand-based marketing campaigns, however, has come under intense scrutiny over the past 10 years for its power to facilitate deception and emotional manipulation. As a way of proceeding through the many differing moral assessments, this paper turns for insight to the tradition of writing on social ethical issues within the Roman Catholic Church. The author suggests that Catholic Social Teaching offers a distinctive approach to advertising ethics that charts a middle course between the two poles of the debate on branding. This article introduces readers to the approach to advertising developed within Vatican documents on media, highlighting the basic values at stake and the particular moral norms for advertising that are articulated. The article then applies these values and norms to the case of brand-based advertising, ultimately suggesting that advertisers approach their work through the virtue of solidarity.

Educational and Social-Ethical Issues in the Pursuit of Molecular Medicine

Molecular medicine is transforming everyday clinical practice from an empirical art to a rational ortho-molecular science. The prevailing concept in this emerging framework of molecular medicine is a personalized approach to disease prevention, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. In this mini-review, we discuss the educational and social-ethical issues raised by the advances of biomedical research as related to medical practice; outline the implications of molecular medicine for patients, physicians, and researchers; and underline the responsibilities of academia and the pharmaceutical industry to translate the scientific knowledge to a meaningful improvement of the quality of life across all members of society.

Social-ethical issues concerning the control strategy of animal diseases in the European Union: A survey

In 2004 a survey was conducted in the member states of the European Union designed to gain greater insight into the views on control strategies for foot and mouth disease, classical swine fever, and avian influenza with respect to the epidemiological, economic and social-ethical consequences of each of these animal diseases. This article presents the results of the social-ethical survey. A selection of stakeholders from each member state was asked to prioritize issues for the prevention and control of these diseases. A majority of stakeholders chose preventive measures as the preferred issue. An analysis was done to determine whether there were differences in views expressed by stakeholders from member states with a history of recent epidemics and ones without such a history, and whether there were regional differences. There were no differences between member states with or without a history of recent epidemics. There were indeed regional differences between the priority orders from Northern and Southern Europe on the one hand, and from Eastern Europe on the other.

Are there characteristics of infectious diseases that raise special ethical issues?

This paper examines the characteristics of infectious diseases that raise special medical and social ethical issues, and explores ways of integrating both current bioethical and classical public health ethics concerns. Many of the ethical issues raised by infectious diseases are related to these diseases' powerful ability to engender fear in individuals and panic in populations. We address the association of some infectious diseases with high morbidity and mortality rates, the sense that infectious diseases are caused by invasion or attack on humans by foreign micro-organisms, the acute onset and rapid course of many infectious diseases, and, in particular, the communicability of infectious diseases. The individual fear and community panic associated with infectious diseases often leads to rapid, emotionally driven decision making about public health policies needed to protect the community that may be in conflict with current bioethical principles regarding the care of individual patients. The discussion includes recent examples where dialogue between public health practitioners and medical-ethicists has helped resolve ethical issues that require us to consider the infected patient as both a victim with individual needs and rights and as a potential vector of disease that is of concern to the community.

Purple haze: the remaking of Dutch drug policy

In 1994, after 80 years of Christian Democratic rule, the Dutch elected a government of Social Democrats, Liberals and Conservative Democrats. High expectations rose concerning policy innovations in social–ethical issues. In the course of formulating the policy paper on Drug policy however, two interacting processes interfered with these expectations of change. Ongoing foreign critique and domestic concern about police investigation methods redirected drug policy into a relatively repressive domain. In spite of growing international support for the Dutch model, it's culture-specific characteristics are eroding.

Service Learning and Developmental Education: The Need for an Applied Theory of Role-Taking and Reflection

This article examines service learning through the lens of cognitive-developmental psychology and developmental education. Recent interest in service learning as a means of encouraging further learning and growth is commendable; however, the goals need to be linked to relevant research and theory. Such theory is lacking. The theories of Kohlberg, Hunt, and Loevinger, as well as recent research on social role-taking and guided reflection interventions are reviewed. The goal is to build a developmentally based theory of service learning that provides conditions (e.g., action, reflection, balance, support and challenge, continuity) to promote guiding programs and to explain how persons construct meaning as they engage in problem solving and reflection on complex new roles and encounter social-ethical issues. Implications for practitioners and future research are discussed.